A man accused of attempted murder and arson while dressed in a Joker costume on a Tokyo train on Halloween night in 2021 said Tuesday that a similar incident a few months earlier inspired him to alter his original plan of going on a killing spree in Shibuya.
Kyota Hattori, 26, who made the statement during his trial at the Tachikawa branch of the Tokyo District Court, admitted to stabbing a man and starting a fire onboard the train but denied the fire was intended to kill other passengers.
Hattori said he conceived of the plan after learning about a knife attack on an Odakyu Electric Railway commuter train in August 2021, in which a man stabbed and slashed 10 passengers. During the incident, the suspect had poured cooking oil inside the carriage but failed to ignite it.